ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS with Insight on Freedom and Pain

Most of us reading this could find ourselves in a situation similar to the following:

It’s been a tough early part of your work week and you’ve had commitments in the evenings, so you haven’t exercised for a few days.  But today, you’ve carved-out time to go to a late afternoon group fitness class.  On your way to class, you get a text from a friend.  They want to hang-out with you somewhere for appetizers before you both head home for the evening.

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Let’s play this movie forward with two different outcomes:

Scenario No. 1:  Some deserved relaxation sounds good, so you get together with your friend for an hour or so at a local restaurant.  As you’re leaving the restaurant, you know that you’ve missed your window for working-out and it feels too late to get started on dinner, so you order pizza for the family.  At home, everyone hangs-out on the couches to eat delivery pizza and watch a movie before bed.  As you fall asleep that night, you’ve got some regrets about not exercising again today.  You wake up the following morning hoping the new day is better than yesterday.

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Scenario No. 2:  You’d like to connect with your friend, so you suggest either meeting at the bike path for a brisk walk or meeting for coffee the following afternoon.  Your friend agrees to go for a walk, and you both feel refreshed an hour later.  At home, you toss a big bowl of salad and sear fresh chicken breast strips to place on top for dinner.  After dinner, everyone in the family catches-up on their week as you play a quick board game together before bed.  You fall asleep feeling good that you got some exercise today and also connected with family and friends.  You wake up the following morning feeling ready to tackle another day.

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Negative and Positive Freedom

​During some recent reading, I’ve encountered a couple of concepts that have the potential to really help you meet your fitness goals and keep your commitments.  I was introduced to one of the ideas while listening to the book Saving Truth by Abdu Murray.  Murray discusses the concept of freedom in a sense that was first introduced by Isaiah Berlin in 1958.  It’s the idea of negative and positive freedom.
 
You usually concern yourself with negative freedom.  This doesn’t mean it’s “bad” freedom.  It gets its label from the idea that there is nothing holding you back from acting as you want.  When you were a child, your parents probably limited your negative freedom…they set boundaries on things like TV-watching, bedtimes, between meal snacking, etc. for our your own good.  As an adult, negative freedom can be limited by such things as personal addictions, disabilities, or past financial mistakes.
 
Democratic societies have an abundance of negative freedom such as freedom of movement, religion, speech, and the right to own private property.  You exercise negative freedom as you choose your own direction in education, career, family life and recreation…just to name a few.

In order to achieve meaningful goals, however, you need to exercise positive freedom.  This is the freedom to reach for a greater purpose according to whatever core set of values you live by.  It is your freedom to attain excellence and meet worthwhile goals for yourself, others and your community.  Positive freedom often requires delayed gratification and self-sacrifice in order to better the common good or improve the future for yourself and/or others.
 
Negative and positive freedom are not in opposition to each other…they go hand-in-hand.  You need freedom from unnecessary restraint in order to act in ways that achieve something worthwhile.  Negative freedom gives you the ability to do what you want, whereas positive freedom offers you the opportunity to do what you should.

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Symptom and Success Pain

Another concept I came across recently that I’m finding useful is an expansion on the impact of pain in our lives.  I read about the idea of symptom pain and success pain in the book The Entitlement Cure by John Townsend.  John acknowledges that pain and discomfort is normal and to be expected in everyday life.  You would probably agree that you experience some kind of physical, mental or emotional pain fairly regularly.
 
You typically identify with symptom pain.  It’s the type of pain that alerts you to a challenge that needs to be addressed.  Symptom pain could be a pulled muscle, hurtful words from a loved one, or a nagging financial issue.  It’s pain associated with an underlying cause that needs to be identified.
 
On the other hand is success pain.  This type of pain comes from doing whatever is necessary to uncover the underlying cause of symptom pain and doing the work required to resolve it.  This pain might be the result of applying the discipline of regular exercise and a healthy diet to minimize injuries…having difficult conversations with people to resolve conflicts…or spending regular time budgeting and planning to avoid financial problems.

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Plan Your Achievements

​Let’s go back and review how the two scenarios at the beginning of this blog post played-out.  Note the great opportunities that your negative freedom (i.e., freedom of travel, speech, religion, ownership, etc.) allows for:

• gainful employment
• spare time
• free markets in which to shop
• the privacy of your home

 
In Scenario 2, you see positive freedom being exercised:

• planning to go to an exercise class
• having a difficult conversation with a friend
• choosing to fix a healthy meal
• engaging in conversation rather than watching TV

 
Here are a couple of symptom pains from Scenario 1:

• feeling guilty about not working out and not cooking a healthy dinner
• regrets over a day that didn’t live up to expectations

 
Now a list of success pains from Scenario 2:

• having a difficult conversation with a friend
• putting forth the effort to complete a brisk walk
• following-through with the inconvenience of fixing a healthy meal
• finding the energy to engage in family conversation

 
As you plan activities that are likely to make up your week, consider the two sides of freedom and pain.  Recognize that multiple opportunities to exercise positive freedom and to turn pain into success will present themselves daily.  Commit yourself to making better choices to meet your health and fitness goals.

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